RECENTLY crowned South West champion Ruth Barnes followed up with her best-ever performance in the South of England Cross Country Championships, writes KEVIN FAHEY.

Against a strong field at Parliament Hill, London, Barnes dug deep to finish 11th - a huge improvement on her 22nd place last year.

Yet the Avon Valley Runners member, from Bradford on Avon, was not entirely happy, even if it was the highest ever position for her club and the leading performance by a Wiltshire athlete.

“I gave it my best on the day but if I am honest, I was hoping to finish fifth or sixth rather than 11th,” said Barnes.

“But it was such a strong field this year. I was the first Over-35 runner to finish, and I guess sometimes I should remind myself that age does make a difference in certain events. Still, I raced as well as I could on the day.

“There was only 30 seconds between me and sixth place but it just didn’t flow on Saturday.

“But I tried my hardest and in the last half mile, I had nothing left to give.”

The leading Wiltshire runner in the senior men’s race was AVR’s Mike Towler in 77th, with clubmate Richard Ayling 120th of the 1,068 finishers.

  • TROWBRIDGE junior international high jumper Tom Gale continued his excellent start to 2017 with another victory on the indoor circuit.

Having only just returned from his mid-week trip to Cologne, where he finished eighth in a top-class international field of senior men, Gale headed straight to Cardiff for the Wales Indoor Championships at the National Indoor Athletics Centre.

The John of Gaunt School student enjoys Cardiff, having already set an indoor PB of 2.15m when winning the South West title last month and, from a field of 13 competitors, secured victory with a jump of 2.16m to add another centimetre to his indoor best and leave him just two centimetres shy of his outdoor mark.

Gale then raised the bar to a lifetime best of 2.20m and on the third attempt, had the crowd cheering as the bar was still in place as Gale Tom hit the mat.

Unfortunately, the wobbling bar eventually fell off, leaving Gale to attack the landmark height again when he joins the England squad for the Hustopece Skakani high jump festival in the Czech Republic on Saturday.

  • JOHN Howorth broke the two-minute barrier again as he improved his personal best for the second time this month over 800m.

At the London Indoor Games, the Hilperton runner won heat four of the senior men’s 800m in 1:59.19secs to clip 0.57secs off the time he set on the same track on New Year’s Day.

That put Howorth seventh in the UK rankings for U20 men, just behind Team Bath clubmate and Westbury-based runner Hayden Bailey, who clocked 1:58.30 the previous weekend.

Howorth’s’s twin brother, Robert, also set a PB after clocking 2:02.18 to win heat six of the senior men’s 800m.

Southwick-based athlete Zoe Mattacks, a student at John of Gaunt School, ran 8.19secs for the U20s 60m.

At the London Indoor Games for U13/15/17 athletes held on the same track the previous weekend, there were also personal bests for Rory Howorth (53.49secs for 400m and 10.40m for the 5k shot), St Laurence School student Jenna Blundell (8.87secs for the 60m hurdles) and Mia Bates (8.91secs for U15s 60m and 9.85secs for 60m hurdles).